“What did you see, Drake?” She faced the back of the egg-shaped chair, and couldn’t see any part of his body except his bifurcated forearm, reaching out from the chair to play across a control panel with all of his nine fingers.

“The interior of the tunnel was bright, and the lights strobed, flickering past, like we were racing through a tunnel with lights embedded on all sides at regular intervals. The lights were white, and they whipped by so fast I couldn’t get a sense of what the tunnel was made of. Janice? Did you see anything else?”

“It was a tight squeeze, a space barely big enough for us to pass through, and it sort of undulated, like it was a flexible tube – the tunnel wasn’t rigid. Otherwise, no, just flashing lights, like Drake.”

“This bridge generator we have works differently than the others, then,” Callie said. “That’s… Huh. That’s a point of information, and that’s all it is, right now. So where are we?”

“Some solar system somewhere,” Drake said.

“That’s about the best I can come up with, too,” the ship said. “The stars are entirely unfamiliar. I’ll try to run some database searches, and see if any groupings or patterns match up, but… we could be anywhere. I can’t even say for sure we’re in the same galaxy, though Ashok seems to think the generator is limited and won’t send us farther. Even so, the galaxy is vast. There’s a good chance we’re farther from our home system than any human has ever been.”

Callie grunted. That wasn’t a claim to fame she’d ever sought. “I don’t necessarily care where we are, if we can get back. Ashok? Is there another entry in that black box’s history now? Can you take us back where we came from?”

“There is another entry, and since I know exactly where we left from, I might have a kind of Rosetta stone to start figuring out how the coordinate system works on this thing. Want me to try to get us home?”

“Very much so. Open a bridge and take us back. Maybe we can trace the communication those Liar maniacs sent and find the rest of their group and figure out what the hell is going on.”

No answer. “Ashok?”

“Sorry, cap, this– Nope. The generator isn’t responding.”

“What?”

“It’s throwing errors, but it’s not like I know what the errors mean. There’s no manual, and once you get beyond the bits of the interface that are purely mathematical and spatial, it’s all literally alien to me. Maybe if I had a biomechanical brain-spider humping the back of my head I’d have some special insight, but as it is… all I can tell you is, the magic box isn’t working.”